“I hope you’re right,” he says, pulling away from the hug and staring down at the photo of Bertha and Pyrus again. “Because if we fail, there will be hell to pay.”
6
It takes a lot of calling around—let’s just say Vegas has a LOT of hotel rooms—but eventually I figure out where Bertha is currently residing. Turns out Pyrus hooked her up big time—putting her up in the Bellagio itself. I guess we can’t add cheap bastard to his list of evil qualities, though we could add “not too bright,” considering he didn’t put her under an assumed name. And it only takes a teensy bit of vampire scenting to seduce the drooling front desk clerk to hand over her room number.
Sometimes I love being a vampire.
I head up to the tenth floor and down the hall to her room. I knock on the door, nervously fingering the bug Jareth gave me, in my pocket. He suggested I put it under the toilet, saying it’s sensitive enough to pick up conversations in the next room, and this way it’ll be out of sight, out of mind. So all I have to do is get Bertha to let me pee in peace and I’ll be golden.
I am so the female James Bond.
There’s no answer, so I knock again. A few minutes later, I’m about ready to go back down to my desk clerk friend and convince him to give me a key when the door finally slips open. Bertha has stripped from her former Resident Evil costume and is now wearing a Bellagio Egyptian cotton robe and slippers, her hair piled high above her head. I worry for a second she might be entertaining company—namely a certain politically connected vampire we both know and love. But a quick peek into the room behind her tells me she’s alone.
“What do you want?” she demands, squinting her eyes at me.
“Can I come in?”
“Why would you want to come in?”
I suck in a breath. Here goes nothing. “I want to talk. I think we got off on the wrong foot earlier. After all, we’re both working for the same people, right? We both have the same mission? I was thinking maybe we should start working together or something.” It’s all I can do not to gag at the words. But I need her to let me in.
For a moment I’m positive she’s going to slam the door in my face. But instead, she widens it, allowing me entrance. Which makes sense, I guess. After all, she’s still relying on me to tell her where Sunny is hiding out. She’s probably relieved I’ve come to my senses at last.
I step inside the hotel room, past the closed bathroom door, and take a quick look around. Though the place is beyond gorgeous—draped in gold and crimson—with an amazing 180-degree view of the famous fountain outside below—there’s something that seems… off. Wrong. Though I can’t, for the life of me, figure out what it could be.
I mean, it’s certainly not messy by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it’s oddly… clean. And really orderly, too. The stakes on her nightstand are lined up in perfect rows. Each queen-sized bed is made within an inch of its life. Even her makeup sits on a nearby table in perfect order—lipsticks lined up, blushes and eye shadows in careful stacks. Heck, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the pile of fashion magazines she’s carefully placed on the bed are in alphabetical order.
“Wow, your maid’s working overtime, huh?” I remark, plopping down on one of the beds. “Hope you left her a good tip.”
I catch Bertha’s cringe as I wrinkle the bedspread. “Be care—” she starts, then stops, and I can see her hard swallow. I reach over and switch on another lamp, allowing light to flood the darkened room. Only then do I get a good look at her face. Her hollow eyes, her smudged makeup. And is that a bruise on her cheek?
“Are you okay?” I ask against my better judgment. After all, she is the enemy, out to destroy my sister. But she doesn’t look very evil at the moment. If anything, I’d say she looks a bit scared.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she says, recovering quickly. She sits down in nearby chair, straightening her robe. “Now, how about you tell me about Sunny and Magnus.”
“Look, before we get into all of that, do you mind if I use the bathroom?” I ask, bouncing up from my spot on the bed. Might as well get that part over with right away in case she goes and kicks me out. Not to mention it’ll give my stupid hands a reason to stop shaking. I start stumbling to the room in question, not waiting for her obligatory yes.
To my surprise, Bertha leaps from her seat and throws herself into my path, blocking the way to the bathroom, an utterly panicked look on her face.
“What?” I ask, worry knotting my stomach at her extreme reaction to my seemingly innocent move. There’s no way she can expect me to have a bug, is there?
“Um, nothing. It’s just… the bathroom’s dirty. I don’t think you want to use it,” she stammers.
Oh-kay. My spidey senses start to work overtime. Is she hiding something in there? Or worse… someONE? Could Pyrus himself be lurking behind door number one, waiting for me to implicate myself somehow?
No, that’s impossible. It’s morning. Her blinds are wide open. Any vampire worth his salt would be deep asleep at home right now, not lying unprotected in a Vegas bathroom. Too easy for some random slayer to come by and stake him through the heart.
“I really have to go!” I cry, trying to dodge her and reach the door. But she remains an unmovable force. I’d be impressed by her reflexes if I weren’t so annoyed at them foiling my supposedly no-big-deal spy plan.